From the blog Series, When Educational Research Goes Remote[1]
“A historian uses detective work and guesswork to piece together resources and draw conclusions, while a recorded interview is a first-hand account told by a witness to history. It is living source material.”
In March 2020, in the wake of the spread of the Coronavirus pandemic, Egyptian schools abruptly closed. There was no blueprint for how students, teachers, and the government would manage the final months of the 2019-2020 school year. The Education 2.0 Research and Documentation Project (RDP) turned to oral history narratives to learn what was transpiring on the ground with secondary school students (March- June 2020). We wanted to learn how students and their school communities were adapting to and navigating fast changing events.
What is oral history and how can it help us understand the effects of educational disruption and change?
As a research methodology, oral history relies on documenting experiences through stories and oral narration. This is usually done through a series of in-depth interviews, in this case, over a period of nearly four months. The researchers asked students open questions relating to specific themes. This differs from a regular in-depth interview which tends to be a one-time encounter with a larger number of participants. Oral history, by contrast, allows for more detail and more depth with a smaller number of participants over a course of time.
What did we want to understand about learning remotely?
We wanted to learn about how students were managing and experiencing the following:
Communication: How did students obtain information about their schools, assessments, and stay informed about changes?
Learning and Pedagogy: How did students study and learn remotely? How were teachers and private tutors providing lessons and support to students? How were students using online platforms and digital resources?
Electronic Exams: How did students prepare for the trial exams and final term assessments? With little supervision, what was the situation with cheating?
Household environment: Was the home a supportive environment? How was /was not the household prepared and/or organized to manage home schooling?
Unlike a questionnaire, we didn't feel the pressure of asking fixed uniform questions, but could adapt them to the answers and circumstances of the given student, while sticking to a common set of themes for all participants.
How did we identify student participants?
We identified a small but diverse group of secondary school students enrolled in Egyptian public schools in different parts of Egypt through purposive and snowball sampling. We reached some students (in grades 10-11) through personal contacts, and others by sending a group message via Facebook and asking for volunteers. In all cases we took formal consent from students and their parents to participate in this study since they were under 18 years old.
What did we find?[5]
Below are just three of the many insights we gleaned through this pilot research.[6]
Students Have a Steep Learning Curve but Still Need Teachers
In the earlier interviews in April 2020, some students shared their struggles with learning “research skills” needed for the new open book tablet- based exams. They expressed frustration at not getting proper support from their teachers who lacked training in this area. Within two months, a number of them talked about their own “good” research skills and ability to find information.
One Grade 11 student, for instance, initially felt overwhelmed by all the platforms. By May, she started independently exploring different YouTube channels and discovered learning apps which she used regularly.
However, even as students discovered quality online resources and gained some skills for independent learning, they talked about needing their teachers. In other words, though they were managing the situation, students wanted their teachers to support and guide them.
Private Lessons are Changing as Online Platforms Proliferate, But Not Entirely
Private tutoring adapted to the pandemic, with some teachers offering synchronous lessons online for fees, and others for free. Students became more skilled at finding free video lessons and other resources, and the Ministry launched a new platform to help them in their end of year exams. While some students seemed more comfortable with these remote means of studying, some parents were skeptical. They trusted the old system of lessons. It remains to be seen if parents will embrace the new study practices and platforms. As one Year 11 student explained:
“The world has now changed, Thanaweyya Amma isn’t like before…. We need to be flexible and adapt to the new situation [with online studying]. [But it’s hard to convince my parents of this. They prefer the old way of private lessons] Maybe they’ll believe me and feel more comfortable, if they find a few of my friends doing the same, so they see it’s not just my idea alone.”
Students Find Analog Solutions to Problems with Digital Devices
A common problem with the tablets was that the tablet pen often broke or went missing, which could become a crisis during an electronic exam. In a focus group discussion, students shared information about how to solve this problem. One student noted, “I tried using my finger, but I couldn’t write the answers with it. But there are other ways to write. For instance, you can use vegetables, like a carrot or pepper or anything, and this works better.” The other students were happy for the advice.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
“Most oral histories have been used and will continue to be used to gather information: data about the events of the past. But they can also be used to discover unfolding consciousness, to document the varieties of ideology, the creation of meaning, and the more subjective aspects of historical experience.”
For further reading on using oral history interviews during COVID-19 and on educating oral history, see:
The Oral History Association’s Remote Interviewing Resources: Remote Interviewing Resources. Retrieved from https://www.oralhistory.org/remote-interviewing-resources/
The Oral History Review’s solicited essays on the implications of interviewing during and about COVID-19: Smucker, Janneken. Perkiss, Abigail and Caruso, David. (2020, September 4). OHR Presents Special Section on Oral History and COVID-19. Retrieved from http://oralhistoryreview.org/current-events/covid-19/?fbclid=IwAR1bh5upK6vpm8kAtmyYadzH1sDpdtLA2Qo_Ozy3F06LiTdvO5TaTmTogYs
The Oral History Association’s Oral History in Education Resource: Oral History in Education. Retrieved from https://www.oralhistory.org/education/
[1] This blog post is the second in the series “When Educational Research Goes Remote.” See the first in the series; Lessons from a Pilot Study in Egypt During Covid-19
[2] Ashenfelder, M. (2013, January 4). Doug Boyd and the Power of Digital Oral History in the 21st Century [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://blogs.loc.gov/thesignal/2013/01/doug-boyd-and-the-power-of-digital-oral-history-in-the-21st-century/
[3] Egypt was uniquely prepared for the pandemic because of its investment in online learning platforms and nationwide availability of digital resources, starting with the Egyptian Knowledge Bank (EKB) in 2016. By August 2020, there were a total of five platforms; LMS.EKB.EG, Study.EKB.EG, Edmodo, Virtual Streaming Classes, and Thanaweya.net which all could support research projects and aid secondary school students study for their end of year assessments.
[4] For more discussion on security and research, see Blog #1 in the series.
[5] The detailed research findings of this pilot study are still under development by the RDP team.
[6] Though this was a pilot study and findings are preliminary, we learned certain things that will inform the direction of further investigations when the school year restarts in October.
[7] Grele, R. (1987). On Using Oral History Collections: An Introduction. The Journal of American History, 74(2), 570-578. doi:10.2307/1900139
We would like to express sincere gratitude to our colleagues Heba Shama and Hany Zayed who provided insightful comments on an earlier draft of this blog.
Photo designs by: Heba Shama
Photos attribution:<https://www.facebook.com/1953651831624967/photos/a.1953672191622931/2691461857843957/?type=3&theater>
[To cite this blog] Herrera, L., and AbdElShafy, N. “Using Oral History to Record Stories of Educational Change During Covid-19” Education 2.0 Research and Documentation Project (RDP). September 17, 2020. https://www.rdp-egypt.com/en/newblog/oral-history-education-egypt-covid-19
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